


The Believers

by Etnoe



Category: Homestuck
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-09-21
Updated: 2011-09-21
Packaged: 2017-10-23 22:21:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,727
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/255674
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Etnoe/pseuds/Etnoe
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A moment in a shared bubble, where the horrorterrors' newest disciple is ostensibly the warden to a murderous troll.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Believers

**Author's Note:**

> Written due to but not exactly as a fill for a [captchalogue prompt](http://captchalogue.livejournal.com/1365.html?thread=1261653#t1261653) for fluffy Rose/Gamzee. The idea made me internally go '...aaww', and then immediately afterwards, 'AAAHH'. This pairing could get messy.

Gamzee started out watching the play of her power across the sky. Then he began to watch her, no matter what she shaped this fragment of the universe to be, deepest colours and vivid shadows, and Rose couldn't help but feel flattered.

Something must have given her away. He sat up, arms stretched behind him to prop him up on the hillside grass, and told her, "Chica, you put hearts and stars in my eyes."

Perhaps he'd watched too many cartoons when he'd still been allowed access to computers and had developed a mildly skewed understanding of human courtship. Or had the cultural associations of those symbols developed similarly for humans and trolls?

Rose drifted down towards him. "That can't be healthy."

He tilted his head and grinned briefly. "Could you do it? Couldn't that be as amotherfuckingmazing as anything you can think of?"

"The point, Gamzee. It's a concept that we've discussed at length, if you recall. What would be the point?"

"Then I couldn't see you smile." (She knew he loved her smile.) "And I and I wouldn't have to be scared at all."

His voice was so even it could be hard to believe he felt a thing; the fluctuations in volume happened with decreased frequency of late, which might be a good sign. It made him seem more as if he waited to feel, hunched, ready and hungry to stuff emotion into his mouth. Still, something about the slump of his shoulders made him seem wistful.

Rose smoothed the skirt of her dress as an excuse to look away - she was changing too, always, and had noticed a waxing urge to give him what he wanted. More emotion, particularly more rage, more _whatever_ (unnamed and perhaps unknowable) - there were vast reservoirs to call on, call through herself and right through the emptiness of him. Her gaze hooked on the contrast of her grey arm against the bright backdrop of the pink sash; at times her skin's colour caught her off guard all over again.

"Lack of fear is not necessarily a good thing," she told Gamzee. "Fear goes a long way to enforcing social constructs and can be considered quite the force for the general good."

"Then tell me what you're scared of!" He threw his arms open, framing an invitation with sudden verve. "I can't be imagining it's all that much!"

"It is a depthless mystery that I can gather the strength to resist such gilded persuasions."

"There's motherfucking nothing to be ashamed of - most everybody's getting nightmares! It's nice," Gamzee added meditatively. "A thing we all share, all of it bringing us closer together."

That triggered a mood swing. He looked down at the grass, a fangs bared further than normal in a scowl, and the instinctive force of his mind billowed outward and scraped resonance from the curving of their bubble-world. Technically it was their prison, a dreambubble adapted on request by the outer gods to ensnare the physical too, with her the warden and Gamzee the prisoner. The problem was that it had gone from being their prison to being _theirs_ , and increasingly, the fact of a world so malleable to their wills felt nothing but natural.

Gamzee's power sent ripples through the skin of their bubble now, and was starting to return resonance from the closest true dreambubbles. It wouldn't break their bubble; for now it seemed that he didn't mean it to. A waste, Rose thought, and told herself not to.

The thing about him was the yearning. That might be something that was at the base of him - the wait for wonders. With all the power that he had so suddenly awakened to and the loss he'd undergone, he went actively hunting for more, and had found that nothing said _enough_ , and maybe nothing would.

That really wasn't the way to think of it. Jade or John would try to help someone through this kind of thing. She ought to; when studying psycho-analysis she'd generally had a vague idea of someday helping patients.

Instead, this: watching the curl of his snarl, that sense of power, smiling when he met her eyes. It was like listening to echoes. There really was something viscerally satisfying about this anchor of believing that you were not alone.

No one was, of course. The gods were there. Still, to have this so close... And, Rose reminded herself, there was no conscionable way to keep it if she allowed him any kind of access to the other dreambubbles.

He was heading outwards - so she drew the gravity of their world into a tighter knot. She sucked every atom abruptly and queasily inwards, wrenching herself down until her feet scraped grass seeds and making her shiver with the off-balance knock to her integral mass. Gamzee gasped with her and clutched at the ground like it was leaving, and did not waste so much as a second before retaliating.

There was instinct in the way he pushed back with a roaring surge of power, and blunt-instrument intellect in the fact that he didn't protect himself from her. Instead he kept beating against the bubbleskin and let her shadows wind freely around the meat of the little world and of him, cracking his perception of it that allowed him to stay here. He lifted his head a fraction from the ground, gripping harder at the turf in terrified reflex, to grin back at her and they both knew better, and they played with it.

He didn't know the power of the horrorterrors and hardly cared about it, but he fought with and through and into it like he was made for it. Her supposed prisoner was even picking up resonance from her, now, forgetting to breathe.

Rose closed her eyes and let a strike from his mind hit her in passing, shoving her towards the stars and deeps. She remembered how to breathe as she began to do it again. She had mind and other miscellanies, in a body, in a bubble. With a boy. However much he loved to match her, and however much the Emissary had helped to make his entire species fit for it, she had to remember that he couldn't

She opened her eyes, looking down at Gamzee. He had turned onto his back and was laughing, diaphragm heaving, and staring at her. "It's about time to go," she told him, and his grin faded.

He sat up, shaky for a moment more, and then took up that preternatural control over ever move of his body (or perhaps it was simply due to having trained himself in acrobatics?). Suddenly he looked unmoved by anything, despite the grass and dirt stains all over him. "Yeah, sister?"

"Can't keep the fighting all to ourselves."

"I guess it's like the sooner we go, the sooner we can come back!" Gamzee spat out, but didn't move. Perhaps the illogic niggled at the sentiment; he'd spend more time with the others the sooner he left, after all, and would have cause to call and be called traitor for longer. He missed them so much, though probably even he wasn't certain as to whether it was as friends or foes. Or possibly also food - Rose had theories about the place of cannibalism in troll society, which she investigated obliquely in as polite a manner as possible.

But such theories and queries were all part of her temporary mental respites from the fact that the forces behind their entwined fates required discovering, persuading, and breaking. The others needed their help and had arranged that they would give it soon. She was still Rose Lalonde, not so changed as yet to disregard that.

"Here's an idea that might cheer you up. Since we were quite serendipitously speaking of hearts a little while ago, it's quite appropriate to keep in mind. There's a saying," said Rose, "the kind of slogan you'd see on embarrassingly earnest online forum signatures and icons. 'The heart is a weapon the size of your fist. Keep loving. Keep fighting.'"

She grinned.

The revelation dawned on him in its own time; he let it roll over and rise up inside. He grinned back, and started to laugh. It could be said that Gamzee had a very physical sense of humour. Seeing what he'd pull out of the jokerkind specibus now was going to be just _fascinating_.

"Sounds like you!"

"That I'd be so trite."

"Sounds like it might be me." Gamzee stood. "Now. Who's heart am I having today, chica?"

"Won't it be interesting to find out?" She had warned the others she might be employing this kind of tactic; they'd probably understood, and were generally capable of keeping out of the way even if they hadn't.

"Talk to me. Tell me. Be all made of guidance."

Rose shrugged. "If you want voices, they'll come as soon as we step out of here."

"Something to be scared of," he said, wistful again. "But if you're saying it's a good thing, I'll go with that."

Outside their bubble he could not hear her above the varied voices in the festertongues, like everyone else alive and a fair number of the dead. He missed her own voice then and often said so, but she couldn't let it bother her much beneath the internal immensity of her determination to keep missing it herself. Outside, the grey in her skin darkened and hardened, curling ever deeper, determined to keep her. No matter: Their friends still needed them and they still needed to go.

Gamzee held out his hand and Rose extended hers, and he smiled some as they took hold of each other and she pulled him along. It was all the guidance she'd be able to offer soon, but honestly, it seemed as if it provided most of what he needed.

 _Believer, believe in me._

There were still a few seconds to tell him so and reassure him, as outer darkness drew them towards the more independently tangible universe outside - and strangely enough, Rose didn't know if she was quite brave enough to say it as yet. That was all right. All unspoken, it might very well be the answer to the question he asked in every word and deed, in the place where she kept him safe for the others and he helped her to remember herself whole.


End file.
